Part 2: BAM…the greatest story never told.

In many ways, BAM became the first same-sex super soap couple with a storyline brimmed with angst, disappointment, and hope.  In the same vain as Luke and Laura and Tad and Dixie, Bianca and Maggie faced daily insurmountable odds along their journey toward love. Sadly, the most difficult obstacle turned out to be just moving the storyline forward with the support of the network.    From the beginning, AMC and ABC daytime avoided the old slow and steady wins the race, and stuck more to dancing the Sapphic somba…one step, forward, one step, back.  Repeat.

Shall we dance?

One Step Forward: The fan writing campaign was an astounding success, and Liz Hendrickson returned to the show only a couple of months later.  Mary Margaret “Maggie” Stone arrives in Pine Valley to find out who murdered her identical twin sister, “Frankie”.   Inevitably Bianca and Maggie run into each other in the small town, Bianca faints at the likeness to Frankie, and as a result they become fast friends, evidence that soaps can move quickly when they so desire.
One Step Back: Bianca brings champagne to celebrate Maggie and Frankie’s birthday.  The situation gets a little too close as a slightly intoxicated Bianca touches Maggie’s face.  Maggie runs to a neutral corner professing with frenzied anguish, “I am not gay, I am not gay.”   Me thinks she doth protest too much…just like Reverend Ted and the meth massages he used to pray away the gay.

One Step Forward: Bianca and Maggie mend their friendship as soap time has a way of accomplishing.  Maggie’s heart goes out to Bianca as she overhears the resident Pine Valley High “mean girls” verbally gay bashing Bianca.  As a result, Maggie asks Bianca to be her date to the prom.  Pining looks held just that much too long lends to foreshadowing…and angst.
One Step Back: Maggie kisses a boy and tells Bianca about it.  That’s the natural progression, don’t you think?

One Step Forward: BAM takes a playful midnight swim protecting each other from the fabled “monster of Willow Lake”.  Maggie asks Bianca why she swims away every time she touches her, was it because she freaked out at the champagne incident? Maggie also questions how Bianca knew she was gay…
One Step Back: Bianca confesses her romantic feelings to a “friend” once again, but this time she feels she has reciprocation.  Maggie says, (all together now) “I’m into guys”, a natural progression, don’t you think?   Enter Henry, the nearest escape hatch for Maggie, All My Children and ABC.

Bianca, with desires of her own and tired of riding the pine so to speak, becomes involved with another woman, a dark, smoldering eastern European, named Lena.  Daytime’s first same-sex kiss is a result of this pairing.  A media blitz by ABC did little to soften the effect as a warning label was slapped across the beginning of the opening sequence.  ABC, citing the often quoted, but never producible book of Network Standards and Practices, thought the kiss required a few moments warning for the housewives of the Midwest to lock the kids out of the room.

See a pattern, but wait, there is more.  You might want to take your Dramamine now.

One Step Forward: In one of the most heartfelt, yet vulnerable scenes ever, Bianca reveals to her best friend, Maggie, that Pine Valley’s resident evil monger had raped her.  Maggie lovingly holds Bianca all night and tells her she is safe.
One Step Back: The message of this particular part of the storyline was somewhat lost in the backlash of gay and lesbian groups accusing AMC of raping the lesbian as a statement.  Gay fans of this couple, with years of soap-watching experience, saw this for what it was, an act of violence and revenge, not the prescribed cure for lesbianism.  We are our own worst enemies at times.  Who knows, AMC’s reluctance to move forward could have been partly shaded by this incident.

One Step Forward: This part of the storyline is truly groundbreaking.  For the first time in daytime television history we have an all female love triangle as Maggie becomes jealous of Lena for taking her place in the acronym.  Maggie kisses Bianca, then freaks, and you guessed it, runs away screaming in her mind, “I am not gay, I am not gay!”
One Step Back: Maggie sleeps with the nearest Y chromosome to prove she is not in love with Bianca.

One Step Forward: Lena leaves town to care for her ailing mother.  Maggie confesses to a friend she has feelings for Bianca, or according to every soap magazine spoiler, Bianca and Maggie grow closer…
One Step Back: Even though Lena is off screen, it’s a very convenient device to avoid moving BAM forward.   Maggie confesses her love to Bianca, but Bianca reiterates her commitment to Lena…somewhere in the Balkans.  As a result, Maggie runs to the waiting arms of an abusive relationship with a man.

One Step Forward: Long distance relationships just don’t work, so Bianca breaks up with Lena over the phone (classy), giving Bianca the space she needs to save Maggie from her verbally and physically abusive boyfriend.   When Maggie said she needed Jonathan because no one else loved her, Bianca once again confessed her love as more than friendship and tenderly kissed Maggie on the lips.

Now, finally, there is nothing, no antagonist, no unrequited love, nothing left unspoken to keep the powers that be from moving forward with this storyline.  Think again.

One Final Step: Bianca decides to leave Pine Valley and asks Maggie to go with her.  They fly off into the off-screen sunset together only after Maggie once again confesses her confusion and her inability to commit to Bianca.  Essentially, after three very long years and a myriad of  “growing closer spoilers”, we have BAM standing somewhat where they started…only the geography has changed.  True, the writing had to reflect the sudden decisions by the actresses to move on from daytime, but once again, we have to play pretend with characters off screen. Did they, or didn’t they, will they, or won’t they?  I don’t believe as committed fans, a mad rush into “the mile high club” was desired, either, but something other than the status quo would have been a more acceptable closure. However, as I pronounced in Part 1 of this posting, although fans would have preferred more network commitment to a more forward movement of the BAM storyline, at least the dance was begun with this pairing.  Being the first is never easy.  As a result of BAM’s success, soaps have dedicated more front-burner space to same sex couples.  Through a forward and back and forward again progression, BAM eventually sambaed down the daytime door allowing pairings such as Breese, Nuke, and now Otalia, to two-step through it.

An Aside
An article about BAM and how the couple became the first same-sex super couple cannot be written without acknowledging the fanbase that provided the support and the gentle network pressure required to move the storyline forward as much as it progressed.  The Bianca and Maggie pairing set the standard for which all other same-sex pairings would be compared.  The same can be said for the BAMfans, who danced that Sapphic samba with the network until the very end.

As I noted in Part 1 of this piece, there was a large contingency of viewers searching for any semblance of representation in the media.  Having seen little more than titillating exploitation from primetime television, AMC’s Bianca became a symbol of possibility.

A group of talented and creative individuals from across the nation became a network of concerted voices united in their desire to have BAM portray their own untold story. Until the Internet age, there was no way of organizing these voices.  Fan pages and forum boards became the party lines of the decades past.  A simple “Google” search connected you to a community welcoming your participation and your views.

Respectfully commenting on aspects of the BAM storyline that were sensitive to the ones it represented, the legion of BAMfans used letter writing campaigns, graphically designed materials, and themed giveaways to bring attention to the cause. The BAM brigade was given national mention in televised and written media across the county.  When was a fan group ever contacted by Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly for a quote used in production?  The BAMfans created a marketing campaign that rivaled anything Madison Avenue could produce.

Having the desire to be an effective force outside of the entertainment world, the BAMfans turned their attention toward charitable organizations.  Realizing its outreach numbered in the thousands, and having well placed contacts in the soap industry, the BAMfans began to make a difference in all parts of the county.  With the unselfish and unwavering help of Eden and Liz, the BAMfans have raised tens of thousands of dollars for such charitable organizations as RAINN, the Matthew Shepard Foundation, the Pediatric Aids Foundation, and BCEFA.

Part 3 – AfterBAM, the present.  (to be continued)